Sarah Palin was elected President, instead of The One. How would her first 100 days have gone? Victor Davis Hanson speculates:

WASILLA CHIC
Also in the Times, Gail Collins weighed in on the already-tired yokelism of the new commander in chief. “What we’re getting is Wasilla chic. That’s what we’re getting. She arrives in the Oval Office, and first thing sends back Blair’s gift of the Churchill bust as if it’s a once-worn Penney’s outfit. Then she gives the Brits some unwatchable DVDs as a booby prize — as if she idled the old Yukon and ran into Target’s sale aisle. Did Sarah send Bristol into Wal-Mart back in Anchorage for that ‘engraved’ iPod for the queen? And what’s this don’t-bow-to-the-queen stuff, but curtsy for a Saudi sheik?

. . .

WORSE THAN 'NUCULAR' ABC’s Katie Couric summed up the general disappointment with the president’s communication skills. “I tried to warn the American people in that interview a few years back what they would get if they voted for her. Let’s face it: She’s a walking embarrassment. I mean just count ’em up: The mayor of Wasilla thinks Austrians speak some lingo called ‘Austrian.’ Then she tries her hand at Spanish and comes up with some concoction, ‘Cinco de Cuatro.’ Next thing she’ll walk into the window of the Oval Office and expect it to open — oops, she’s already done that. No wonder that when her Teleprompter stalls, she shuts her mouth until it catches up. I’m surprised she managed to get sworn in. And did she think that tasteless ‘Special Olympics’ slur was funny? Or making fun of octogenarian Nancy Reagan’s séances? No wonder Wanda Sykes feels at home.”

In case you missed the humor, the only changes VDH made from Obama's first 100 days are that he changed the name from Obama to Palin, and changed the news coverage from worshipful homage to tiresome snark. And I only excerpted maybe an eighth of what VDH wrote. Everything else really happened in this universe, to a guy named Obama.

This is called satire. It probably will soon be illegal as a "hate crime" in the new Democratic Socialist Worker's Paradise. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The blog Innocent Bystanders has the ugly truth:

The graph should speak for itself, but in case it doesn't: Obama's projection is the lower line. The actual performance of the economy is worse than the projection of what would happen had the Democrat Congress and the Democrat President had done nothing at all.

To repeat: The performance of the economy is worse BECAUSE of the "Stimulus." Now some people knew that this would be the result. These tend to be people who, oh, I don't know, actually WANT to read bills being considered in Congress before they get passed.

I have every confidence that our new "progressive" overlords will continue to go out of their way to turn it into an even bigger disaster, celebrating all along the way how much better they've made things--well, at least for their major campaign contributors, anyway.

Democrats: Government--You're doing it wrong.

AP/Yahoo News

Borrow and spend, borrow and spend. It's the Democratic way, and it's back . . . Big Time!

Guess who's going to pick up the tab for all of this? Just guess (and the answer isn't going to be "the rich." The rich can figure out ways to not pay. You probably can't.)

UK's Telegraph: Barack Obama's rich supporters fear his tax plans show he's a class warrior

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

"You get the government that you deserve." Unfortunately, these morons gave Obama to all of us. Command economies don't work, if your goal is a rising standard of living for all people. Under the worker's paradise Obama is leading us to, the ruling class enjoys the paradise and the rest of us get to work to support the rulers. A sufficiently cynical writer would call it serfdom.

A really cynical writer would call it slavery.

The inflation from Obama's massive borrowing and injection of dollars into the money supply hasn't hit yet.

The bad news is . . . here's how well Obama's brand of economic theory has worked, from the time of his intellectual/political precursor, FDR:

Tell me again how getting off the gold standard was a good idea?

Chart from Zero Hedge via Instapundit.

Surprised? Don't be. This, from Reason Hit and Run via Instapundit:

Selling old kids books, anything with metal, paint, or plastic that a kid might use, old clothes or shoes with metal components that a kid might wear? You know, any of the stuff people routinely sell at yard sales? Technically, you could be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of fines. Obviously, it's unlikely the CPSA goons are going to bust up your yard sale. But putting out a detailed booklet that reserves the right to do so is hardly encouraging about where the implementation of this legislation is heading.

Here's the Government's booklet (pdf) in case you're interested in how you're tarnishing the New Worker's Paradise.

Should you wish to report on your neighbor's blatant flaunting of these common sense Government dictates, click here to be a Good Citizen and rat out your neighbor. You know you want to. Remember, you are only as good as your Government lets you be.

The climate models predicting "global warming." From Watts Up With That:

Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician, Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.

. . .

Writing in 2005, Hansen, Willis, Schmidt et al. suggested that GISS model projections had been verified by a solid decade of increasing ocean heat (1993 to 2003). This was regarded as further confirmation the IPCC’s AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis. Their expectation was that the earth’s climate system would continue accumulating heat more or less monotonically. Now that heat accumulation has stopped (and perhaps even reversed), the tables have turned. The same criteria used to support their hypothesis, is now being used to falsify it.

It is evident that the AGW hypothesis, as it now stands, is either false or fundamentally inadequate. One may argue that projections for global warming are measured in decades rather than months or years, so not enough time has elapsed to falsify this hypothesis. This would be true if it were not for the enormous deficit of heat we have observed. In other words, no matter how much time has elapsed, if a projection misses its target by such a large magnitude (6x to 8x), we can safely assume that it is either false or seriously flawed.

Assuming the hypothesis is not false, its proponents must now address the failure to skillfully project heat accumulation. Theories pass through stages of development as they are tested against observations. It is possible that the AGW hypothesis is not false, but merely oversimplified. Nevertheless, any refinements must include causal mechanisms which are testable and falsifiable. Arm waiving and ad hoc explanations (such as large margins of error) are not sufficient.

Let me translate from the cautious scientific jargon above into more easily understandable language: This means that EVERY scientific study, and EVERY policy prescription based on the GISS model of climatology is wrong. Invalid. Mistaken.

This means that James Hansen, the NASA-employed climate change fanatic who is responsible for the GISS model, is a-scientific to continue to insist that his model correctly represents reality. It does not. He is wrong. There are two types of computer models: those which accurately represent aspects of reality, and those that don't. Those that do are, within limits, useful tools to predict future occurences and events. Those that don't are useless fantasies. The GISS model has now been shown to reside in the latter category, along with the "Earth is Flat" model and the "Sun moves around the Earth" model.

Back to the drawing board, climate change alarmists.

Via Little Green Footballs, a post from the blog SensuousCurmudgeon with which I totally, completely, 100% agree. I'm taking the liberty of re-posting the entire thing here, after the Read More. It begins:

My fellow Republicans:

As our party is going though a much-needed period of introspection, please consider that there was a time when this party stood for the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights. We still honor those principles; but those who now govern have no concern for or even understanding of such matters.

"It's a war crime if you do it, but it's OK if we do it."

New York Times article:

When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said the military commission system appeared dead.

But in recent days a variety of officials involved in the deliberations say that after administration lawyers examined many of the cases, the mood shifted toward using military commissions to prosecute some detainees, perhaps including those charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

To misquote Star Wars, "This is not the Hopeful Changeyness you were looking for. Move along, move along."